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gender pay

Conservative Campaign headquarters reported that women’s median hourly rate is15.7%higher than men’s, whilst the Labour Party recorded a median hourly rate for women 4%lower than men’s.

The CBI reported that women’s median hourly rate is15.1%lower than men’s, compared to Unite the Union’s gender gap of 29.6%lower in favour of men. The GMB’s Women’s median hourly rate is 32.4%lower than men’s and Unison’s women’s median hourly rate is 15.8%lower than men’s.

The Royal College of Nursing has a median gender pay gap of 13.7% lower than men, whereas the General Medical Council has a median gap of 6.7% in favour of men. The Nursing and Midwifery Council has a women’s median hourly rate of3.7%lower than men’s and the British Medical Association has a gap for women that is 13.6%lower than men’s.

The Rugby Football Union reports that women’s median hourly rate is6.6%lower than men’s, at the Football Association the women’s median hourly rate is 12.1%lower than men’s and the England and Wales Cricket Board has a Women’s median hourly rate which is 17%lower than men’s. At the Jockey Club, women’s median hourly rate is 23%higher than men’s.

The Guardian News and Media has reported that women’s median hourly rate is12.1%lower than men’s, The Times newspaper has a women’s median hourly rate is 12.7%lower than men’s. Associated Newspapers (home of the Daily Mail) has a Women’s median hourly rate is 15.4%lower than men’s, whereas at The Economist Women’s median hourly rate is 29.5%lower than men’s.

The University of Cambridge has a gender pay gap where women’s median hourly rate is15%lower than men’s, at the University of Oxford women’s median hourly rate is 13.7%lower than men’s. The University of Sunderland reports that women’s median hourly rate is 20.9%lower than men’s, the gap at the University of Portsmouth is for women’s median hourly rate to be 23.3%lower than men’s.

Bravissimo has a pay gap where women’s median hourly rate is6.2%lower than men’s, Ann Summers has a women’s median hourly rate which is 21.6%lower than men’s. At Victoria’s Secret, women’s median hourly rate is 19.4%lower than men’s.

NB: The company median hourly pay gap for the UK is 9.8% in favour of men.

The BBC ran an article this weekend highlighting the gender pay gaps of a number of companies that had already reported. The original article is here.

Already we’re starting to hear some interesting responses to the debate that it has raised:

It’s the wrong metricThe situation is complexWe shouldn’t confuse this with equal payWomen aren’t as good at asking for raisesSorting this could be bad for women

The over intellectualisation of the situation runs a massive risk of missing the unmistakable point:

The world of work has been designed to be discriminatory.

That’s not to say that individual organisations have gone out to structure their workforce in particular ways to discriminate against any specific group, just that the world of work over a number of decades has become biased in many different ways and we have been complicit by failing to interrogate it with the level of granularity that it required.

It is absolutely right to say that the issues are systemic in nature, for example the gender imbalance between pilots and crew isn’t (I would imagine) the result of direct discrimination. But, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t wrong and that it doesn’t need tackling.

My biggest fear on this issue is the level of mansplaining that is taking place to justify the figures. We are immediately looking at criticising the data, rather than embracing it. At the same time, we need to support and not belittle companies that are publishing gaps. Ultimately progress will be achieved over the next two or three years and that is when we should be judging people based on progress.

The factors that have led to the current situation are multi-faceted and complex. The solutions will be equally complex and multi-faceted. You don’t change a system overnight. But we will make absolutely no progress unless we accept the basic truth that we have a problem.

And that problem isn’t just about gender, it’s about race, disability, it’s about socio-economic background and ultimately it is about fairness. So let’s not try to explain it away, let’s walk forward together with confidence, courage and a single unifying purpose, to make our organisations better and fairer, for now and for the future.

In the fallout from the BBC pay debate, I found myself responding to indignant comments about the “state of HR” by pointing out that I very much doubted that the contracts that were under discussion were covered by the BBC’s HR team. The debate was around the payments made to the “talent”, the actors and presenters that were contracted to the BBC. They weren’t (as far as I can understand) actual employees.

I haven’t worked in television, but my guess is that the commercial contacts for “talent” are probably handled entirely separately to the pay and wage structures that would be handled by the HR team. A comparison would be a football team – whilst many of the big clubs now have HR Directors, they’re normally responsible for the teams that operate behind the scenes and not the players themselves. That’s why situations such as a Bosman can occur – something that would never normally happen in an employment contract.

The closest I’ve ever been is my time in publishing and I think it would be fair to say that it would have been considered entirely bizarre if I’d suggested as HR Director that I should have had some input to the structure of the contracts that were signed with our authors. But should I have had?

That’s the real question that the situation at the BBC brings to the fore. Most of us in well run businesses now are focussed on pay structures, on job evaluation, equal pay and of course gender pay reporting. But only for those “employees” or “workers” that are seen to be the remit of the HR department. In a world where increasing focus is being placed on the fairness of compensation structures should we be extending the same principles that apply to employees to other associated groups of people (I’m not entirely sure what to call them as a collective). Not necessarily as the responsibility of the HR function – simply using the same methodology.

The BBC have rightly had the light shone on them, but what about Sky, ITV, Channel 4, Amazon, Netflix etc.? And whilst we’re at it, what about the vast difference between the pay of premier league footballers versus their female equivalents? Are there justifiable reasons? Which other industries have groups of non-employees where there are discriminatory pay practices that pass under the radar because they’re not strictly considered employees?

Maybe this is an opportunity for HR to share its knowledge of remuneration and compensation management with other parts of the business. To use our expertise in handling similar situations and the lessons we’ve learnt as we’ve worked to improve the balance between our employees. If our principle concern is unfairness, it seems to me the issue goes far beyond the BBC.

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